Education Tech Startups Overtake Big Apple

Heather R. Huhman is a career expert, experienced hiring manager, and founder & president of Come Recommended, a content marketing consultancy for organizations with products that target job seekers and/or employers.

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With education technology all the rage these days, young entrepreneurs are seeking ways to improve their recent education experiences while taking a share of the $650 billion industry.

Some of the most exciting startups transforming the infamously resistant-to-change education sector are based in New York City, a rapidly growing hub of ed tech. Here are five game-changing Big Apple education startups to watch in 2012:

Seeking to revolutionize online learning, 2tor, Inc. partners with top-tier non-profit universities to bring their existing degree programs online. Founded in 2008 by John Katzman (founder of The Princeton Review), Chip Paucek (former CEO of Hooked on Phonics) and Jeremy Johnson (a serial education entrepreneur), 2tor has so far joined forces with Georgetown University, the University of Southern California and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, serving close to 3,000 students combined in nearly 30 countries.

The goal is to offer students around the globe the opportunity to distance-learn at a top American university, without sacrificing education quality, social experience or individualization of material.

“Not only do we maintain the academic quality, rigor and standards found in the brick-and-mortar classrooms, we also make initial investments in the launching of the programs. Furthermore, in order to ensure long-term quality, we are very selective in signing on a limited number of universities with which to partner,” said Johnson.

2tor is the highest funded education startup in the nation, having raised $65 million in venture capital. The company recently scaled up to over 350 employees and has plans to announce two new university partnerships in 2012.

Knewton is disrupting the one-size-fits-all paradigm of classroom learning. Founded in 2008 by former Kaplan executive Jose Ferreira, Knewton has developed an adaptive learning platform that customizes educational lessons for individual students.

Depending on learning pace, style, stimuli and knowledge level, Knewton calibrates and individualizes curricula. The company has been called the Pandora of education, and was named a technology pioneer by the World Economic Forum. It recently ranked on Fast Company'slist of the world's 50 Most Innovative Companies.

In its own words, "Knewton analyzes learning materials based on thousands of data points—concepts, structure, difficulty level, media format—and uses sophisticated algorithms to piece together the perfect bundle of content for each student, every day."

The platform is being used by thousands of students in nearly 200 countries. Located in Midtown Manhattan, Knewton employs 70 and has raised $54 million in venture capital.

Noodle.org is seeking to make the search for great education easy, and in its own words, “has built the first comprehensive education search and recommendation engine in history”. The online portal lets preschoolers, grad students and everyone in between find education solutions fit for their needs.

Users are asked to fill out profiles so that results can be matched to their exact interests and location preferences. Search verticals include graduate programs, K-12, tutoring and test prep. By the end of 2012, guidance counseling, study abroad, medical schools, fitness classes, learning disability specialists, summer camp and afterschool programs will be added to Noodle’s search capabilities.

“Noodle.org users benefit from the thousands of hours we spend aggregating the finest education and learning data available. We then deliver that information through a simple to use, personalized user interface. In addition to our significant proprietary data collection and recommendation engine, we currently feature over 130,000 educational providers on our site,” said CEO Joe Morgan.

The fast-growing company, with 12 employees, was founded in 2010 and is located in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. With over $7 million in anticipated revenue this year (a fourfold increase from 2011), and a soon-to-close $5 million Series A funding round, Noodle expects 2012 to be a big year.

Seeking to revamp the way students find tutors, Tutorspree – a 2011 YCombinator startup - has created an online marketplace for K-12 tutors, allowing learners to find tutors in their city, searchable by topic, price and customer reviews.

Differentiating from the traditional market players, including expensive agencies like Sylvan and unreliable classified sites like Craigslist, Tutorspree prides itself on affordability and dependability. The startup allows tutors to keep the vast majority of their hourly rate, unlike their traditional competitors. Emphasizing quality, Tutorspree has turned away nearly 50 percent of applicants wishing to become listed tutors.

Aaron Harris, Josh Abrams and Ryan Bednar launched the company in 2010, seeking to “make sure students have access to the same kind of great tutoring” that helped Harris get into Harvard. They have raised over $1 million and are headquartered in Tribeca, Manhattan.

Believing that everyone has something valuable to teach, Skillshare has created an online community where individuals can teach and learn from one another. The company’s mission is to “democratizing learning” by transforming communities into knowledge sharing ecosystems.

From spreadsheets to studio lighting and art collecting to starting a business, on Skillshare.com one can find teachers and classes to meet just about any interest. Teachers set their own prices, and Skillshare takes 15 percent. Participants are encouraged to leave feedback so that the best teachers are rewarded with more students and the bad ones are replaced.

The 13-employee Manhattan startup was founded by Michael Karnjanaprakorn and Malcolm Ong in 2010, and has already scored over $3 million in venture capital from the likes of Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital.